The footage seems like something out of the movie Bad Lieutenant. It clearly depicts a uniformed NYPD officer in the Bronx, playing craps in order to determine the fate of a man he was holding in his patrol car. The video was captured by onlookers who appeared stunned by the cop’s behavior. The officer in the video has been identified as David Terrell, who was recently promoted to detective.
A man on the street can be seen pleading with Terrell to let the man go. “If I ace you right now, you gotta let him go,” the man says to the soon-to-be detective. Terrell then blows on the dice and tosses them onto the concrete sidewalk. There isn’t much information out on why the man was in custody, or whether or not he was allowed to go free. However, none of that is relevant. What is relevant is that a man sworn to uphold the law is playing an illegal game of chance in order to determine what could be a life altering incident for the man in his car.
Private Investigator Manuel Gomez was given the video and made sure that Detective Terrell’s name was known to the community. “He’s making the police department look horrible and he shouldn’t be out there. There’s a lot of good cops and their image is being destroyed by the mere fact of the existence of Detective Terrell.” Terrell is also the subject of more than a dozen lawsuits alleging multiple allegations of misconduct and incidents of wrongful arrest. According to recent reports, Terrell is under investigation for this incident, however there is no information readily available on the case.
The most egregious of Terrell’s offenses involved the beating and false arrest of a suspect in 2012. Terrell and other officers stopped suspect Jateik Reed, after alleging they saw him throw down what looked like a bag of drugs. He was beaten and arrested, however video later showed that Terrell and the other officers’ statements were false and that there was no probable cause to stop Reed. Police also pepper-sprayed the friend of Reed who filmed the incident. When Reed’s mother, two brothers and a friend stopped by the precinct to check on him, they were also arrested. The family received a settlement from the city totaling $609,000 for their trouble, yet despite this, the Bronx district attorney declined to even review the case to see if charges were appropriate for Terrell and his gang of armed thugs.
According to Gomez, the NYPD refuses to take action, despite the dozen lawsuits and complaints that continue to roll in against Terrell. Gomez is puzzled by the fact that the NYPD has allowed Terrell to continue working and that the department refuses to take Terrell off the streets. The only statement from the NYPD is that “The matter is an internal review.”
This article (NYPD Cop Caught Gambling for a Man’s Life has Long History of Misconduct) is a free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and AnonHQ.com.
Supporting Anonymous’ Independent & Investigative News is important to us. Please, follow us on Twitter: Follow @AnonymousNewsHQ
